While 5.1 has a handful of new gear from reputation rewards, the majority of gear upgrades in 5.1 will come through a new currency-based upgrade system. Players can permanently increase the ilvl of their 458+ gear (both armor and weapons) by visiting a new Ethereal and cashing in spare currency.

Wowhead has created several tools for item upgrades:

Each item's page has toggle options to display upgraded stats.

An Upgrade column has been added to search result pages. This displays all the upgrade versions for an item in icon form, similar to dynamic quest rewards. Mousing over these icons will display the upgraded versions.

If you're ever wondered what it's like to make art for Blizzard, you should also check out WoW Insider's interview with Jessica Dinh, one of the winners of Blizzard's first Student Art Ccontest. The winners got to spend several months interning at Blizzard and even put some finishing touches on Mists of Pandaria!

5.1 Reputation Changes

While the reputation grinds in Mists of Pandaria try some innovative things like removing reputation from tabards in dungeons, many players were not looking forward to repeating the grind on their alts. In 5.1, each faction now has a special commendation that can be purchased at Revered from quartermasters which unlocks a 100% bonus reputation gain for all characters on the account.

The Battle.net World Championship is going on this entire weekend, starting on Friday, November 16th, at 6:00pm PST--and we've got all the information you need to follow along and watch the live events you want! In addition to the finals of the StarCraft II World Championship Series, there's some competition that will definitely interest WoW players as well.

The Challenge Mode Dungeons race between top guilds Stars and Supreme Quicksand is shaping up to one of the Championship highlights for WoW players. Watching teams race each other in Challenge Modes was a player-favorite at the Mists of Pandaria Launch event, and now players can watch even more races in challenge mode dungeons and the live Mogu'shan Vaults raid! With Leaderboards up, players can check them to see how these elite guilds stack up on stage against the record times currently established around the world.

In addition, the World of Warcraft Arena Global Finals are also going on, with the top two teams from each global region competing for a prize pool totaling $189,000.

We have a lot of blue posts for you to digest today--from reminicising about Ulduar (and a blue subsequently explaining why Ulduar wasn't that awesome for everyone) to talking about AMPM cups, there's a little bit of everything Blizzard related. Zarhym even took the time to explain what Blizzard's thoughts are on that +intellect plate that always drops and everyone disenchants after their paladin is decked out.

Oh, and of course, everyone's talking about that BlizzCon cancellation as well.

Our friends at WoW Interface also posted their addon of the week. It's an amazing one. Have you ever wanted the encounter journal to have more encounters? You know, those pesky vanilla WoW ones and more? Well, thanks to the power of addons, it can be that awesome! Check out CompleteEJ over at WoWInterface today and let us know what you think.

The D3DB crew also has been tirelessly datamining some big Diablo III changes--check them out and the Beta Patch 10 notes here!